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INTRODUCTION Spectacular environmentalisms: media, knowledge and the framing of ecological politics Michael K. Goodman a , Jo Littler b , Dan Brockington c and Maxwell Boykoff d a Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, UK; b Department of Culture and Creative Industries, City University London, UK; c The Sheffield Institute for International Development, The University of Sheffield, UK; d Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado-Boulder, USA As we move firmly into the so-called Anthropocene an era defined by human-induced global environmental change, neoliberal, consumer capitalism and the unprecedented flow of media, knowledge and communication how is it that we know about the environment? More specifically: how is it we know about humanenvironment relationships those tension-filled, ever-present, often-obscured, but inescapable relationships that are most likely overlain by some form of a market? How do we know about the ecological destruction embedded in these current humanenvironment relationships? How do we know what to do about the increasingly solid specters of climate change and irretrievable biodiversity losses as well as the ordinarily polluted cities and fields many live in and count on for survival? As we and the authors of this special issue of Environmental Communication contend, given the growing prominence of media and celebrity in environmental politics, we now increasingly know about the environment through different forms, processes and aspects of the spectacle and, in par- ticular, the spectacular environments of a progressively diverse media-scape. Moreover and form- ing the core focus of this issue we argue that we are more and more being told about how to solveecological problems through spectacular environmentalisms: environmentally-focused media spaces that are differentially political, normative and moralized and that traverse our everyday public and private lifeworlds. The contributions published here derive from a series of UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Network-funded seminars and our own research projects. Hailing from a range of different disciplines including geography, media and cultural studies, environmental science, anthropology, sociology and development studies, we came together to try to better under- stand the relationships amongst spectacular forms of media and environmental issues. Initially prompted by the editorsinterests in celebrity politics in the context of global humanitarianism (Brockington, 2014; Goodman, 2010; Goodman & Barnes, 2011; Littler, 2008), philanthrocapitalism (Goodman, 2013; Littler, 2009, 2015) and the environment (Boykoff & Goodman, 2009; Boykoff, Goodman, & Curtis, 2009; Boykoff, Goodman, & Littler, 2010; Brockington, 2008, 2009; Goodman & Littler, 2013) as well as by key media and environment texts by those in our network (Anderson, 2014; Doyle, 2011; Hansen, 2010; Lester, 2010; Maxwell & Miller, 2012) our collective conversa- tions ranged across the multiplicity of meanings produced through environmental mediation, the role of media industries in ecological politics, pro-environmental celebrity promotion, anti- environmental greenwashing, the locations of agency in environmental change and the psychosocial affective dis/connections with more-than-human natures. Put another way, our interests lie in critically examining the contemporary cultural politics of the environment - those contested processes by which environmental meanings are constructed and © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Michael K. Goodman [email protected] ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION, 2016 VOL. 10, NO. 6, 677688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2016.1219489

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Page 1: Spectacular environmentalisms: media, knowledge and the ... · INTRODUCTION Spectacular environmentalisms: media, knowledge and the framing of ecological politics Michael K. Goodmana,

INTRODUCTION

Spectacular environmentalisms: media, knowledge and theframing of ecological politicsMichael K. Goodmana , Jo Littlerb, Dan Brockingtonc and Maxwell Boykoff d

aDepartment of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, UK; bDepartment of Culture andCreative Industries, City University London, UK; cThe Sheffield Institute for International Development, The Universityof Sheffield, UK; dCooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Center for Science and TechnologyPolicy Research, University of Colorado-Boulder, USA

As we move firmly into the so-called Anthropocene – an era defined by human-induced globalenvironmental change, neoliberal, consumer capitalism and the unprecedented flow of media,knowledge and communication – how is it that we know about the environment? More specifically:how is it we know about human–environment relationships – those tension-filled, ever-present,often-obscured, but inescapable relationships that are most likely overlain by some form of a market?How do we know about the ecological destruction embedded in these current human–environmentrelationships? How do we know what to do about the increasingly solid specters of climate changeand irretrievable biodiversity losses as well as the ordinarily polluted cities and fields many live inand count on for survival?

As we and the authors of this special issue of Environmental Communication contend, given thegrowing prominence of media and celebrity in environmental politics, we now increasingly knowabout the environment through different forms, processes and aspects of the spectacle and, in par-ticular, the spectacular environments of a progressively diverse media-scape. Moreover – and form-ing the core focus of this issue – we argue that we are more and more being told about how to “solve”ecological problems through spectacular environmentalisms: environmentally-focused media spacesthat are differentially political, normative and moralized and that traverse our everyday public andprivate lifeworlds.

The contributions published here derive from a series of UK-based Arts and Humanities ResearchCouncil (AHRC) Research Network-funded seminars and our own research projects. Hailing from arange of different disciplines including geography, media and cultural studies, environmentalscience, anthropology, sociology and development studies, we came together to try to better under-stand the relationships amongst spectacular forms of media and environmental issues. Initiallyprompted by the editors’ interests in celebrity politics in the context of global humanitarianism(Brockington, 2014; Goodman, 2010; Goodman & Barnes, 2011; Littler, 2008), philanthrocapitalism(Goodman, 2013; Littler, 2009, 2015) and the environment (Boykoff & Goodman, 2009; Boykoff,Goodman, & Curtis, 2009; Boykoff, Goodman, & Littler, 2010; Brockington, 2008, 2009; Goodman& Littler, 2013) – as well as by key media and environment texts by those in our network (Anderson,2014; Doyle, 2011; Hansen, 2010; Lester, 2010; Maxwell & Miller, 2012) – our collective conversa-tions ranged across the multiplicity of meanings produced through environmental mediation,the role of media industries in ecological politics, pro-environmental celebrity promotion, anti-environmental greenwashing, the locations of agency in environmental change and the psychosocialaffective dis/connections with more-than-human natures.

Put another way, our interests lie in critically examining the contemporary cultural politics of theenvironment - those contested processes by which environmental meanings are constructed and

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Michael K. Goodman [email protected]

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION, 2016VOL. 10, NO. 6, 677–688http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2016.1219489

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negotiated across space, place and at various scales which, in this case, involve assemblages ofscience, media, culture, environment and politics. As the contributions to this issue demonstrate,these assemblages involve not only the “clear and present” spectacle-ized representations that gaintraction in diverse media discourses, but also the many reverberations, feedbacks – and crucially– silences that heavily inform affective relationships with the environment. Interrogating themediated features of spectacular environmentalisms through its solid and more ghostly forms—both of which are bound to positionalities, material realities and social practices (Hall, 1997) – illu-minates questions of how power and influence infuse the constructions of varied environmentalknowledges, norms, conventions and “truths.” In short, these politicized media processes influencea range of equally politicized ways of seeing, being with and relating to diverse environments throughthe tethering of the spectacular to the discourses and practices of the everyday (de Certeau, 1984; Cox& Pezzullo, 2015; Foucault, 1980).

Knowing spectacular environmentalisms

But what, more specifically, are spectacular environmentalisms? In its most overt sense, the phrasecaptures the large-scale mediated spectacles about environmental problems. Here, we might placesuch phenomena as the Live Earth concerts, Vanity Fair’s Green Issues, or celebrity environmentalactivity (such as Leonardo di Caprio’s pronouncements at the 2016 Oscars about climate change, hisdocumentary The 11th Hour or his formation of The Leonardo di Caprio Foundation “to help restorebalance to threatened ecosystems”) (Hann, 2015). Importantly, the word “spectacle” draws attentionto the mediation of the message. It carries with it a freight of critical baggage, being famously associ-ated with Guy Debord’s classic 1967 Situationist text La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spec-tacle [1983 (1967)]). For Debord, mediated spectacle was typical of modern consumer society inwhich a process of visual commodity fetishism was supplanting real forms of human connectionand sociality and thus should be abolished through acts of détournment or visual hijacking.

The strength of this Debourdian analysis of the spectacle is to draw attention to the effects ofcapitalism on media production and ideology and to the possibilities for its disruption. We cansee the continued veracity of the lineaments of this analysis if we apply it to events such as LiveEarth, which expended vast amounts of CO2 to make vague gestures towards dealing with the climatecrisis without critiquing corporate polluters or a model of economic growth that prioritizes increasedproduction and profits – even of the “green” sort – above the environment. And, we can see the con-tinuation of détournment in the 600 posters put up around Paris critiquing corporate influence at theCOP21 climate talks by the Brandalism collective, who produced a series of clever and visually dis-ruptive “subverts” in public spaces across the city.1

The problem of such a narrow theory of spectacle is that it relies on a paradigm where mass mediaare de facto false and relations between people are real. There is little scope to imagine progressivesocial change beyond the subvertisement, to consider politics beyond the immediate protest, to con-sider the complex ways people use media to connect and disconnect, or to account for how the bal-ance of power can change through media and its manipulations. For these reasons, media andcultural studies developed and continues to draw on a range of additional political and cultural the-ories as well as that of the spectacle: hegemony, representation, affect, ideology, psychoanalysis, pol-itical and cultural economy (Hall, Evans, & Nixon, 2013).

Spectacular environmentalisms also have other connotations. They gesture towards the breath-taking complexity of nature, the multiplicity of ecologies, of natural assemblages, of the infinite inter-dependence of our natural world and the relentless attack on this by people in the age of the Anthro-pocene. This connects to various genealogies and traditions: to the Romantic sublime, to deepecology, to mysticism, to the picaresque, to Sunday rambling, to nature appreciation societies andto the Blakean injunction to see the world in a grain of sand. The diverse environments that “envir-onmentalisms” want to look after, in other words, are often spectacular: they are strikingly and pro-foundly dramatic at the same time, quotidian and ordinary in the everyday complexity of the

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spectacles of nature. The relationship between these two realms or meanings is critical, with the latter(spectacular nature) providing the former (commodified spectacle) with the resources it commodi-fies and spectacle-izes and, conversely, the former (commodified spectacle) often polluting, and oftenattempting to extend the possibilities, engagements and affective resonances of the latter. How thesemultiple, variegated and complex instances of spectacular environmentalisms intersect, diverge andinform the mediation of contemporary environmental politics is a core concern of the papers andcommentaries in this issue.

Mediating, framing and relating spectacular environmentalisms

Before introducing the contributions of this issue, we briefly explore three concepts – mediation,framing and relating – to provide a firmer theoretical landscape on which to describe how these mul-tiple notions of spectacular environmentalisms intersect and are played out in the intellectual offer-ings here. These ideas provide crucial theoretical insights into “spectacular environmentalisms” as aconcept in its own right but also an insight into how spectacular environmentalisms are practiced,their effects and the assemblages that make them take on “vital” material forms (e.g. Bennett, 2010).Given the theoretical reverberations that our use of the terms “spectacle” and the “spectacular” elicit,our short exploration below signals the multidisciplinary approaches that the considerations of spec-tacular environmentalisms require if not demand.

Mediating environmental spectacle

The concept of mediation highlights how the different forms and figures of mediatized spectacles, forexample, green celebrity, wildlife film, info-graphics and subvertisements, interact between, with andamongst society and nature. Spectacle-ized media and media moments – alongside the humanembodiments of the spectacle in the form of activists, celebrities and politicians – sit in-betweenaudiences and the natural world, sometimes imploring us to “do something for the tigers” orclean water, sometimes entertaining us, sometimes teaching us about ecologies or their destruction.Yet, a great deal of recent social theory calls this simplistic characterization of the in-betweenness ofspectacular environmentalisms into serious question. Indeed, in their own special issue on “mediat-ing environments,” Hroch and Stoddart (2015, p. 298) echo the likes of more-than-human actanttheorists (e.g. Latour, Haraway, Lorimer, Bennett and Deleuze) to state that mediation, for them:

is a way of conceptualizing the way in which media, environments, and human actors intra-act in a shared spaceof relations in which materialities and meanings are made and re-made.… [M]ediation does not positionnature outside or against its media representations, but asserts that media “perform” or “enact” socio-environ-mental relations.

Thus, as implied in several of the papers in this issue, Hroch and Stoddart point to the theoretical andpolitical benefits of getting “beyond representation” in the considerations of spectacularenvironmentalisms:

Thinking through what we might call the “thick” lens of relation rather than representation enables us to con-sider the ways in which our understandings of representation can be complexified. In other words, mediation asa concept invites us to see even the “lens” of representation itself as a more-than-representational apparatus.(p. 298)

Whilst positing the study of “mere representation” as an academic technique of the recent past isoften today overplayed – in the process simultaneously patronising those scholars who providedmuch richer multilayered analyses than they are often given credit – the act of calling attention tothe variety of possibilities for new forms of thick description or inventive theoretical approachesto the relationship between mediation and environment remains significant.

Indeed, we can note that the purposeful in-betweenness of spectacular environmentalisms is acore facet of their mediation: they are designed to gain and maintain our attention through diverse

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instances, forms and actants. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the figure of the so-called greencelebrity, as several of the papers detail, who deploy and use their star power to save the environ-ment. As performative mediation “devices,” green celebrities – who are very much a part of the glo-bal élite – are clearly speaking for and in the name of nature (cf. Boykoff, 2011). Put differently,nature and the atmosphere may not have media standing but, more and more, green celebrities –including now the Pope (Brulle & Antonio, 2015) – surely do.

The question remains, however, in terms of the effectiveness of these mediation devices andindeed, spectacular environmentalisms more generally: do they distract, diffuse and dissemble ordo they raise interest and awareness to the point of effective change? One simple answer is of courseprovided to us by the legatees of the Frankfurt School: green celebrities and spectacular environ-ments merely entertain us into complacency and inaction. Or, even worse, they produce the falseconsciousness that has our celebrity-induced, copycat, para-social purchases of hybrid electriccars making a substantial difference, at the same time reproducing the vastly unequal power relationsthat also define the Anthropocene (cf. Kapoor, 2012; Richey & Ponte, 2011). There really is no “out”of capitalist social relations in this analysis: spectacular environmentalisms are the comforting andentertaining cage we build around ourselves as we grasp the bars in mediated glee and clap to thesights and sound of the end of the world.

The much more difficult and involved response here is one that does not just look to answer thequestion, but rather asks further questions about the contextualized impacts of spectacular environ-mentalisms – and in particular, green celebrities – in ways that bring their potentially more politicalnature to the fore (Brockington, 2008; Cox & Pezzullo, 2015; Miller, 2013; Wheeler, 2013). Can theyhave impacts? If so, of what kind and why these types of impacts? Are these impacts in the realms ofknowledge, understanding or perhaps even positive social change?We are not disputing the power ofmediated spectacle to distort and de-politicize, but rather are also working to draw attention to thecritical need to not just understand the processes by which spectacular environmentalisms distractand de-politicize but also how some of their various forms might contain conditions for more radicalcritique. This skeptical possible-ism suggests we need to ask about what “work” spectacular envir-onmentalisms do and can do in, for example, the material mediation of the effects of global climatechange. How can spectacular environmentalisms be deployed and do work for the powerless and inthe support of rights and justice? Our authors tussle with these questions here, indicating how criticalengagement is needed from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Framing spectacular environmentalisms

Spectacular environmentalisms frame – implicitly and/or explicitly – how individuals, society andhumans more generally should not just think about the environment but also how we should relateto it. As Lakoff (2010) argued in one of the most cited papers in this journal, “frames are commu-nicated via language and visual imagery” (p. 74). As he puts it, “the messenger matters. Visuals mat-ter. Body language matters” in the construction of environmental frames given that the “[t]ruth [ofenvironmental destruction and how to solve environmental crises] must be framed effectively to beseen at all” (p. 80). Thus:

[i]n order to communicate a complex fact or a complex truth, one must choose one’s words carefully to activatethe right frames so that the truth can be understood. If the hearer has no frames, then you have to choose yourwords carefully to build up those frames. (p. 73)

Put simply, “[t]he facts, to be communicated, must be framed properly” (p. 73).Two important points stand out here in the context of the framing work of spectacular environ-

mentalisms. First, spectacular environmentalisms function through visual grammars and registers asmuch or even more than they do the discursive. That drowning polar bear appearing on Facebook,the denuded, smoking Indonesian forests replaced with palm oil plantations and dying orangutanson TV, the next green celebrity fronting a “healthy oceans” campaign on your Twitter feed, the

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breaking news of activists chaining themselves to the fences at Heathrow to stop the construction ofanother runway and a new info-graphic showing us that April 2016 was the hottest on record: spec-tacular environmentalisms show us as much as they tell us about ecological worlds and, indeed, do sothrough images designed to make a lasting impact on audiences through our growing technologicalcapability to produce and consume visual media.

Second, spectacular environmentalisms, through this emphasis on the visual, are not simply aboutthe transmission of facts, words and “rational” knowledge but also about fostering emotion and ecol-ogies of feeling. Whilst underplayed in Lakoff’s (2010) work, he does acknowledge that whilst “manyframe-circuits have direct connections to the emotional regions of the brain” and that “you cannot berational without emotions,” to re-frame environmental issues, communication must “work emotion-ally” (p. 72). Environmental stories, he argues, must “exemplify your values and rouse emotions”(p. 79), something we and the authors here would argue spectacular environmentalisms do verywell. Thus, spectacular environmentalisms work to frame affect as much as they do cognition:they are designed through visual means, to get our attention and pique our environmental imagin-aries in ways that work to get us to feel, to connect and to “do” (cf. Lorimer, 2007, 2010). In otherwords, spectacular environmentalisms are forms of mediated, visual media that work across affectiveregisters to frame not just environmental issues but offer up pedagogical narratives about how weshould go about caring for more-than-human nature. We see, but most vitally, feel the determinationof activists sitting in trees, the green celebrity’s anger that rapidly turns to tears as that last tree is cutdown to make way for “progress,” the joy and hope in the announcer’s overdubbed voice commen-tating about a new elephant/tiger/orangutan sanctuary. Spectacular environmentalisms give us visu-alized, affective, para-social performances of anger, sadness, loss, hope, joy and many other emotionsthat attempt to frame our own affective responses to save the world.

Relating to/through/with environmental spectacle

With environmental spectacles, affect and, indeed, mediation can only be formulated through theprocesses of relating. Mediation, affect and framing denote relationalities amongst environmentalactants, media forms, technological platforms and audiences. Relating to spectacular environment-alisms is cognitive and affective, technological and “natural,”material, discursive and visual. Relatingthrough and with spectacular environmentalisms is about the desire to put into affective, cognitiveand material practice new ecological ontologies of a more-than-human world. This is often ironic,however, as spectacular environmentalisms by their very nature can also work to (re)enforce the sep-aration they try to overcome. Environmental media – spectacular or otherwise – devoid of peopleand human’s ecological impacts springs to mind here.

Contemporary relationships to, through and with environmental spectacles more often than notnow include what Büscher (2013, p. 1) calls “Nature 2.0”: the digitization of ecologies and environ-mental politics that “create new virtual forms and manifestations of nature and its conservation thatintersect with material natures in complex new ways.” This has two important – and clearly relevant– implications for thinking about spectacular environments. First, Büscher argues that the Web 2.0technologies that animate Nature 2.0 give internet-users the ability to “co-create” or “prosume”environmental content (Büscher & Igoe, 2013). Thus, conservation supporters, “greenies” and envir-onmentalists in the audience can “have a greater say in what [the] ideas and ideals [of nature mightbe] and potentially even co-create them within the limits set by the media platforms within whichthey act” (p. 1). Put another way, the re-imaginings of human–environment relationships throughspectacular environments involve novel relationalities to media technologies such as Twitter, Face-book and blogs as much as they do to environments themselves. The critical question Büscher doesnot ask, though, is: what if we Tweet or post to Facebook about the environment and no one reads itor does anything about it? Does Nature 2.0 matter in the ways he might argue it does? The questionsin this context should perhaps be these: why, how and in what ways does Nature 2.0 come to matter?More broadly, which spectacular environmentalisms matter, why and in what ways? Engaging with

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and researching these questions will only become more important as we continue to “app-ify”environmental conservation and ecological politics.

The second implication for spectacular environmentalisms Büscher points to is the ways thatNature 2.0 works to both “encourage and complicate the commodification of nature and its conser-vation” (p. 1). New media, he argues, have the potential to further commodify nature into spectacleby, for example, turning biodiversity, landscapes and ecosystems into forms of capital and so furtherdeepen the processes of the monetary valuation of nature. This is, thus, the further deepening of theneo-liberalization of the ecologies of conservation that see our ways of relating to nature as merely aset of economic rationalities. Spectacular environmentalisms in this form begin to replicate the veryfoundations of consumer capitalism through campaigns for voluntary donations, conservation pro-grams and sustainable consumption. Indeed, green, sustainable and “conscious” consumption figurelarge in spectacular environmentalisms: all we need is the right app to tell us which sustainable fish tobuy, a barcode we can scan to find the most environmentally “just” household cleaner, or, at a largerscale, which hybrid/electric car to buy. Here, spectacular environmentalisms are seemingly as muchabout novel commodity forms – that is, “natural” commodity fetishism – and economistic forms ofrelating as they are these “care-full” digital spaces in Nature 2.0.

But, complications also abound: spectacular environmentalisms through Nature 2.0 can makemoney in ways that support conservation on the ground as states continue to “roll back” environ-mental regulations and social funding for conservation programs. Indeed, the new digital economyis riddled with socially and environmentally conscious businesses and economic models that notonly do something for nature, but further spectacularize the environment. These approaches alsotend to individualize our response at a time when a more collective social and sustainable responseis warranted in the face of the structural imperatives of global environmental and climatic change.How the forms of relating embedded in Nature 2.0 and its spectacular environmentalisms mightwork along more collectivized means through the crowdfunding of, for example, conservation pro-jects and radical environmental media is worthy of much greater consideration. This is why, we con-tend, it is important to pay attention to the political and cultural economies of different forms ofmediated spectacle, their circulation, distribution and use in order to simultaneously track newforms of anti-environmental backlash and also those of ecologically grounded progressive possibility.

Our spectacular environmentalisms papers and commentaries

We turn now to introduce the papers and commentaries in the issue. Each of the papers takes on,either explicitly or implicitly, the concerns about spectacular environmentalisms we have raisedabove. Questions of the mediation, framing and ways of relating to spectacular environmentalismsthread throughout each of the papers, both within and across these contributions. The commentarieslook to pull out common themes and theoretical lineaments, at the same time working to situate thecontributions here across larger scholarly and social landscapes as well as raise related issues in thecontext of spectacular environmentalisms.

To begin, Miller (2016) and Drake and Smith (2016) take on the unenviable task of tackling someof the key macho bastions of anti-environmentalism in the form of Formula 1, football and petrol-heads (in Drake and Smith’s case, the British TV show Top Gear). These are important sites to studyin the sheer reach and depth of their populism. The shifts of consciousness that would have to takeplace for these domains to be made even a little more environmentally friendly – and to be proud ofthat shift – would itself be seismic and would perhaps make pretty much anything seem more poss-ible. Specifically, Drake and Smith examine how Top Gearmaintains the hegemony of its prejudices,through a mixture of humor, denial and dismissal. Top Gear was, at the time of the writing of thispaper, one of the jewels in the crown of the BBC, being seen in nearly 200 countries and with hun-dreds of millions of viewers. This was despite, or indeed because of, content which was profoundlyanti-environmental: chief presenter Jeremy Clarkson is renowned for his dismissal of “eco-mental-ists” in his writings. It took a personal assault by that presenter on a fellow BBC employee, rather

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than the anti-planetary diatribe (or homophobia or xenophobia), to render the program undesirableto the BBC. The authors’ particular concern is how humor is used to reinforce the presenter’s worldviews and to promote an anti-authoritarian, libertarian stance. Stupidity, Drake and Smith observe,drawing on Ronnell, is an active force in world affairs. In Top Gear, stupidity, cathected by humor torebellion, reinforces a message that “cars are essential to a well-lived life, and denial of such pleasuresis to cave in to establishment authoritarianism, or simply to accept a mundane existence.”

Miller’s concern is less how the hegemony of football and Formula 1 are established and morehow they could be more effectively challenged to become environmentally responsible entities bythe environmental organizations (here, specifically Greenpeace) who seek to challenge them. Hisquestion is what is the nature of responsible citizenship required in a world beset with transnationalenvironmental problems caused by global entities and networks seemingly able to absorb or bypassprotest with ease? Football and Formula 1 are, he observes, the source of three problems. They arepolluters, greenwashers and licensees (of other polluting firms). These are complex sophisticatedopponents. Miller is sympathetic yet constructively critical of current efforts by Greenpeace whichseem over-fond of secret plans for spectacular protest, in the case of Formula 1, and have failedto find purchase in the case of football. Here, Miller insists that the nature of civic engagementwith environmental problems and protest requires both sophisticated, elite-level lobbying (notpranks) that speaks a language corporate representatives (especially sponsors), and governments,can understand. He draws inspiration from grassroots movements empowering ragpickers inColombia as potential models of engagement with grassroots fan activism. He notes that football’sstrong fan bases provide alternative sets of values and practices in which environmental alternativescould root themselves. Currently too much environmental protest speaks to its converts, not futureconstituencies.

Lester’s (2016) exploration of environmental protest around the Great Barrier Reef in Australiaalso tackles issue of transnational protest. Lester examines protests against plans to build a largecoal mine and dredge routes for ships to travel through the reef. These were vitriolic battles betweenthe Queensland State and Federal Australian governments against committed and powerful environ-mental groups. They are still not resolved, and Lester provides a rich account of their unfolding, set-ting them into the broader context of other environmental battles in Australia. The fights over thereef are particularly important because they help us to understand in what public sphere spectacularenvironmental protest takes place and in what spheres it can prove effective. For just as environ-mental problems are transnational, so too are transnational protest groups (around shark fins,ivory, climate change, etc.). But – and this is the crucial insight – transnational protest becomesmore powerful because it is feared and resented by governments. As Lester puts it: “It is clearthen that a transnationalized public sphere now appears as a spectre in the imaginary of industryand governments.” It follows that one of the research agendas for environmental communicationresearch is to better understand how transnational public spheres are created. This means in practicethat we “follow… the generation, circulation and contestation of the symbolic and the spectacular(to reveal) at least some of the conditions under which meaning-making, attributing responsibilityand collective decision-making are taking place transnationally.”

Like Lester, Jeffreys (2016) is concerned with the actual consequences of mediated environment-alism, here with respect to celebrity activism in China against the consumption of shark fin soup.Both papers emerge with fascinating conclusions about the politics of mediated environmentalstruggles. Jeffreys examines the role of celebrity activism in promoting environmental activismand behavioral change. She examines the work of Yao Ming, a former basketball player who wasrecruited by WildAid to combat the consumption of shark fin soup in China. Jeffreys is not per-suaded that the communications this campaign presented were particularly effective. Her analysisof their content and framing finds a number of deficiencies that would make it hard for Chineseaudiences to sympathize with the campaign’s message. The result, she argues, was much more effec-tive overseas, in Europe and North America, than in China. She is similarly skeptical about the com-munications of a series of highly prominent Chinese businessmen who also sought to advocate

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against shark fin soup. Although these men attracted high levels of attention to much of their work,this environmental lobbying did not appear to strike a chord with the general public.

However, there is a twist in the tale: there has been a reduction in consumption, and this Jeffreysattributes not to the appeal of the celebrity for the consumer but rather to the appeal of the celebrityto political elites. The campaign by the businessmen was noticed by party authorities, who preventedparty members from using shark fin soup in their official entertaining. Sales dropped by 70–90%.Shark fin soup consumption declined not because the public was responding to the call but becausepowerful political elites decided, because of this call, to constrain their own consumption of the soup.This was a victory of “authoritarian environmentalism.” This conclusion is similar to Brockington’s(2014) work on the role of celebrity in post-democratic politics. Publics may not be listening, butelites do notice what celebrity spokespeople say. China can hardly be called post-democratic, butthe same principle is at work. In less democratic societies, or relatively closed societies, celebritycan provide a way in because it provides a means of accessing elites.

Finally, four papers examine what sorts of response and connection different forms of environ-mental communication can have on their audiences. Doyle’s (2016) focus is on veganism, which shechooses in part because of her own commitment to it and in part because it is one of the more radicaland less popular environmentalist causes. This presents obvious challenges to the more populist con-tent of the celebrities she is exploring (in this case the work of Alicia Silverstone, an American actress,and Ellen DeGeneres, an American comedian). Most especially, Doyle’s particular concern is howthe ethics of veganism, which are part of the prime motivations of most vegans, can be communi-cated in a highly commodified, consumption-driven celebrity culture. This she explores through adetailed account of each celebrities’ personal activism on behalf of veganism. Doyle’s work is lessconcerned with the actual consequences of environmental activism (again in this case celebrity acti-vism), but with a reading of the sorts of messages they promote. The result is a different sort ofenquiry from Jeffreys: a close exploration of what celebrities are saying and why. For Doyle’s purposeis to understand how the philosophy and ethics behind particular environmental issues can beencoded and communicated by the celebrity medium.

There are differences in how each celebrity promotes their cause. For Silverstone it is part of herpersonal branding, for DeGeneres it is not as central to her life as a celebrity. Yet Doyle finds thatDeGeneres rather than Silverstone is better able to highlight the inequality and injustices againstwhich vegan’s rail because of the connections she can draw between animal rights and forms of socialinequality. There are, however, also important commonalities. Doyle finds that there is some dilutionof language (e.g. veganism becomes “kindness”), and the ethical commitment becomes reconfiguredas a lifestyle choice, required for happiness, healthiness and personal fulfillment. This conclusion isconsistent with Chouliaraki’s (2013) analysis of celebrity humanitarianism. Chouliaraki alsoobserves that celebrity humanitarianism is less driven now by the needs of the cause, the wrongof the injustices being inflicted, and more by the desires of humanitarians to lead meaningful,happy and fulfilled lives. Humanitarianism, like veganism, is a lifestyle choice. And this puts Doyle’sconclusions in a slightly different perspective: these qualities become less those of the celebrity them-selves, but rather of their imagined audience. In these terms, the lack of ethical imperative is part ofthe zeitgeist of the age, as much as of the beliefs of the messenger.

Lockwood’s (2016) starting point is his grief at the stark facts of biodiversity loss which he con-trasts to the tears of joy that flowed when he watched the documentary film Cowspiracy. This leads tohis enquiry into the role of affect and emotive responses in contemporary environmentalism. Hisreview suggests a slightly schizoid approach to mobilizing affect in environmentalism. Environ-mental campaigns are clearly meant to make people upset and bothered, but the understanding ofaffect in the literature about them is plainly deficient, reducing concern to questions of knowledgedeficits. There are, as his paper demonstrates, much richer resources if we are to understand howemotive responses can be mobilized and understood.

Empirically, the paper explores how affect is mobilized with a detailed analysis of Cowspiracy. ForLockwood it is the film’s identity-work which is crucial. It allows the audience to see how

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environmental activism can reinforce, and not threaten, the current formation of their own identity.This is an important contribution for it offers means to answer some of the thornier problems whichhave beset studies of environmentalism. Milton (2002) asked some time ago “why is not everyone anenvironmentalist” for the damage caused demanded more response. Her answer was that love ofnature forged during childhood was forgotten, or failed to survive the passage to adulthood in wes-tern societies. Lockwood’s work suggests ways in which we can understand how this love is kept aliveor revived. Similarly, Cohen (2001) asked how concern for distant strangers was forged in environ-ments where we are always hearing about causes which we could support, but do not. His answer wasthat we are all inevitably neglectful (in denial) because there is so much information available aboutdeserving causes that we cannot respond to it all. Instead people who are more effective in marshal-ing their efforts, in caring for distant strangers, are focused upon a few such causes. Again, Lock-wood’s work helps us to understand how concern is fostered, and could be fostered, for thosecauses which do motivate us.

Lousley (2016) and Sullivan (2016) provide two typically beautifully written and challengingpieces that take on the very premises of affect, connection and relationship with nature in worldsbeset with alienation, isolation and separation. Lousley’s concern is with the language scientistsuse to make biodiversity appealing to people and its loss alarming. With characteristic scholarshipand rigor, she examines carefully the language used to promote connection between people andnon-human nature by such greats as E.O. Wilson. Lousley’s argument is that the portrayal of biodi-versity in the popular science texts devoted to celebrating life on the planet and promoting its stew-ardship ends up promoting commodified or abstract spectacles – life as a “noun” rather than “livingas a verb.” She observes that the storytelling mode that Wilson uses to communicate his fascinationfor biodiversity means that “(l)ife is re-enchanted… through a succession of abstractions and sub-stitutions.”His work serves to disembed biodiversity, and the biologist, from their environments andsocio-economic contexts. Yet that context matters, for, as Lousley shows drawing on Lewis’s work,the socio-political environments of these biologists are peculiarly American, and their work andimpressions have been forged in particular (and peculiar) field locations.

The result of this is a distinctive deficiency of affective connection, and for Lousley (drawing onButler’s work) this leads to “loss without grief.”We are not sufficiently invested in this strangely iso-lationist creation of “biodiversity” to mourn it. Biodiversity becomes a souvenir and biodiversity lossa marketable commodity in conservation’s engagements with capitalism. Yet, there is an alternative.Lousley finds this in the work of Hugh Raffles who tells the biographies of insects and scientists andhow they intertwine. These are stories which produce an affective politics that can create connection,for they are socially embedded, not fetishized objects.

Sullivan uses similarly rich data, but of a different sort, to make a similar argument, namely thatmaterial (in this case natural history film) that is meant to connect people to nature, either does notdo so, or is driven by logics which diminish that connection. Her work is derived from an event eth-nography of the Wildscreen documentary film festival in Bristol in 2012. There she observed, in con-cert with others, film-makers, commissioners, camera-operators, music writers and a host of otherpeople talk about the process and dynamics behind good film-making. It was clearly an alarmingexperience as the industry is thoroughly commercialized with the constant search for “the moneyshot” and dramatic exciting footage which, Sullivan, drawing on Lakoff and Taussig, argues creates“significantly disconnective affects,” because

(i)t seems to emphasise that “real nature” is somewhere else. It is not to be found in the mundane and rather lessdramatic natures amongst which “we” live and share our lives daily. And it can make our embodied interactionswith material nature, as opposed to the virtual natures made possible through digital technology, somewhat lessexciting and energising as a result.

To ram the point home, she suggests that watching nature-films is to love of nature as watching por-nography is to intimate sexual relationships. The result is that “such framingmay work against compo-sition of a caring ecocultural ethics that entwines human with more-than-human natures and futures.”

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In this aspect her critique of the production process and discourses surrounding the productionand creation of film resonate with other critics of natural history film who observe that, in their con-tent, these films fail to capture the stillness and peace of the non-human world (Bousé, 2000; Mit-man, 1999). Both Bousé and Mitman report the incident of a montage of violent money shots from aBBC production that was shown on US networks as an advert. This upset Sir David Attenborough,the series narrator because it reduced the series to just the “money shots.” But both authors also notethat this was simply an extension of the logic producing the films in the first place. The peace andstillness of nature are removed and instead the films are filled with action, the pursuit of which Sul-livan describes in detail. However, Sullivan goes one step further and contrasts these productivelogics, and the sorts of films and disassociations they produce with an entirely different sort offilm – Green whose mixture of complex story (of commodity chains) is peaceful and alarming foo-tage, the absence of narration (or indeed any music for the first part of the film), and the fact that it isfreely available, makes this utterly unlike the run-of-the-mill natural history program. YetGreen wonthe top prize of the festival. This, Sullivan argues, is a hopeful moment: “Green is an ‘anti-capitalist’activist film in which skill and art is passionately deployed to convey critique with political contentand thus to motivate for change.”

Both Lousley and Sullivan provide richly supported and careful arguments, but both promptqueries. Green’s role and purpose in a gathering such as Wildscreen might be taken as preciselyto provide a palliative contrast to the rank commercialization and disconnect being created fordiverse audiences. The fact that the industry can honor these different films (as it has pre-viously, awarding Mike Pandey’s radical films the same prize) satiates the industry’s collectiveconscience, allowing business to carry on as normal. In that sense Green may not be an alterna-tive, but functional to the continuation of the system. For Lousley the challenge is that thesedeadening logics do create connection for particular communities – and most especially forscientists who plainly look up to and venerate the authors of these problematic texts. The con-nections that Lousley fails to find emanating from these works inspire thousands of youngscientists around the world, even in Lockwood’s own paper in this collection, which beginswith his grief at the loss of biodiversity.

Finally, we are immensely happy to close the issue with three wonderful commentaries by Pez-zullo (2016), Turner (2016) and Branston (2016). All three scholars were presented with thewide-ranging constellation of topics in the issue and have crafted their own distinctive and succinctresponses to it. Pezzullo argues that this collection takes on the task of trying to reinvigorate some-times tired environmental causes and, better still, to understand what revives climate change acti-vism. Branston, analyzing film, engages with the environmentalist dystopias and dilemmas thatare apparent in recent blockbusters, observing both a darkening of moods, plots and sets as wellas a return to magical and thus apolitical approaches. Turner, discussing celebrity, reflects onhow the politically compromised nature of the “celanthropist” and their role in environmentaldebates may necessitate a move away from the celebrity-commodity. That these ideas have anecho in Brockington’s writings on celebrity advocacy, which emerged from environment and devel-opment studies, is indicative of how we have attempted to make this issue – like the network it cameout of – a transdisciplinary endeavor. We are very grateful to the commentators for drawing suchimaginative and constructive connections between and beyond the network.

Note

1. See http://www.brandalism.org.uk/brandalism-cop21.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to all the participants in our network, especially Malcolm Draper, John Blewitt, Lisa Ann Richey, UmaKothari, Jim Igoe, Anders Hansen, Jamie Lorimer, Graeme Huggan, William Beinart, Einar Thorson, David Marshall,

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Martin Scott, Bob Smith, Patrick McCurdy and Christine Barnes. The editors would like to thank the efforts, fortitudeand patience of the commentators but especially the authors; this has been a very long time coming and we reallyappreciate you hanging in with us. Finally, we would like to thank the input and forbearance of Alison Andersonin shaping the issue and the helpful suggestions from all our anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The work and papers presented here (and elsewhere) were very gratefully supported by a networking research award[AH/H039279/1] from the AHRC’s Landscape and Environment Programme entitled “Spectacular Environmental-isms: Celebrity and the Mediation of Environmental Change.” A special note of recognition to Nick Clifford andthe Department of Geography at King’s College London for additional financial support of the network’s meetings.

ORCiD

Michael K. Goodman https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4861-029X

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